


living where the black meets the blue

by JenTheSweetie



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, brief mentions of suicidal ideation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 19:56:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13577859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenTheSweetie/pseuds/JenTheSweetie
Summary: “She shot you?” he asks, and Poe looks away; he won’t force Finn to meet his eyes.“Yeah,” he says.  “Knocked me out cold.  To be fair, I was mutinying.  She probably should’ve killed me.”He says it lightly, but Finn rears back and says, “That’s not funny, man,” and then he’s gone, and it shouldn’t be possible to feel worse than he did before, but hey, he’s Poe Dameron: anything is possible.What happens after the end of everything.





	living where the black meets the blue

**Author's Note:**

> Major thanks to my editor, writing partner, and dear friend, Snapjack, without whom I would never have dared to write in the world of _Star Wars_. She's the best.

They’ve been on the Falcon for three days before Poe realizes that Finn won’t look him the eye.  That’s fine with Poe; he can’t look himself in the eye, either.

  
  
  


“Get some sleep, Poe,” the general says eventually.  They’re in orbit around some nowhere moon most of the way to the Outer Rim, and Maz is working on getting them a safehouse.  

“I’m good, sir,” Poe says.  

“It wasn’t a suggestion,” Leia says.  “You’re no good to me asleep on your feet.  Am I going to have to shoot you again?”

“We can’t spare the blaster bolt,” Poe says, heaves himself to his feet.  They’re using the rear cargo hold as a sleeping quarters, and half the Resistance is already curled up asleep; Poe’s about to snag a spot near the door when he realizes Finn’s followed him.

“She shot you?” he asks, and Poe looks away; he won’t force Finn to meet his eyes.

“Yeah,” he says.  “Knocked me out cold.  To be fair, I was mutinying.  She probably should’ve killed me.”

He says it lightly, but Finn rears back and says, “That’s not funny, man,” and then he’s gone, and it shouldn’t be possible to feel worse than he did before, but hey, he’s Poe Dameron: anything is possible.

  
  
  


Leia always tells them there’s no time to mourn in war, so they don’t.

Even if there was time, there are so many more to mourn than are left to do the mourning; they aren’t equal to the task.  Leia still smiles, so they do too, and Poe wonders, once in a while, how long she’s been putting off her own mourning.  Wonders if maybe, after so long treading water, it stops feeling like drowning.  

The needs are basic: food, and equipment, and medical supplies, and _people_ , so Poe spends his days sending comms to every distant point in the galaxy he can think of, to the maybe-rebels who hadn’t come when the whole of General Hux’s fleet was bearing down on them but are starting, now, to peek out from their hidey holes, and send supplies or troops or at least credits.  

Because they _are_  a spark, but sparks don’t catch on their own: you have to fan them, encourage them, blow until you’re gasping, and Poe hopes, if he tries hard enough, he might be able to trade his lungs for bellows.

  
  
  


Somebody on Eriadu has a couple of crates of blasters they’re willing to sell to the Resistance for practically nothing, so Poe asks permission to take a ship and bring them back.

“Take Finn with you,” the general says, and Poe just says, “Yes, sir” and wonders how much she can see, how much she can _sense_.  

The op is smooth, even if Finn is stiff in the co-pilot’s seat, silent on the way to meet the dealer. “I’d wait til later to get out of here,” their contact says, once nods have been exchanged and the blasters are loaded into the light freighter.  “Just before dawn, the fog rolls in from the west.  Good cover.”

“Thank you,” Poe says, and turns to Finn.  “Dinner?”  
  
“What?” Finn says, watching their contact walk away, his hand hovering over his blaster.

“It’s a meal, takes place at a specific time of day?” Poe says.  “You gotta be hungry.”

Finn shrugs, but he follows Poe back down the dusty street and into the first cantina that looks like its washed its drinkware sometime since the last war.  There’s almost nobody around, but there’s not much they can say that they’d want overheard, so they sit in silence that’s just the wrong side of companionable.

“Rey,” Poe says finally when they’re halfway through dinner, thinking that this, at least, is something Finn will _want_  to talk about.  “How is she?”

“She’s fine,” Finn says.  “You saw her this morning, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Poe says, because he did, but that’s not what he _means_ , what he means is - “I mean, you and her.  Are things - yeah?”

Finn laughs a little bit.  “She’s - she’s _something,_  right?”

“Yes,” Poe says.  

“But it’s not like that,” Finn says.  “With me and her.  Does it _seem_  like it’s like that?”

Poe thinks about it.  “Not really,” he says, a little apologetically.  

“Didn’t think so,” Finn says.  “It’s - I’m just glad she’s here, you know?  She’s the only friend I’ve ever had.  Besides you, I mean.”

Poe suppresses a wince, and Finn blurts out, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Poe says.

Finn stares down into his empty ale, and Poe thinks that two of them were probably too much for the kid on an empty stomach; he wasn’t a New Republic cadet, didn’t get his space legs pounding Bantha Blasters before he was old enough for his pilot’s license.  

“But I am,” Finn says.  “For - we screwed up, we - _I’m_  the reason it didn’t work.  I’m the reason the Resistance - the reason everybody - ”

“No,” Poe says.  “Don’t - Finn.  I told you to do it.  I got you a ship, I called Maz, I - ”

“But if we’d done it _right_  - ”

“It was _me_ ,” Poe says, quietly, and it’s the first time he’s said it out loud, because he hasn’t had to before, because everyone else just _knew,_  even if they were too kind to say it to his face.  “It was _all_  me.  You were trying to do what was right.  I’m the one who got everybody killed, buddy.  Don’t - it wasn’t you.”

Poe looks around, but nobody’s paying them any attention.  Finn’s looking at him, and maybe it’s because he wore a helmet most of his life but he’s _terrible_  at hiding his emotions, and Poe sees them play across his face: doubt, and fear, and self-loathing, and something else that Poe thinks he should be able to recognize but can’t.  “It wasn’t you, either,” Finn says, finally.

Poe laughs.  “Who was it then, pal?” he says, and Finn doesn’t reply.

  
  
  


When Snap Wexley shows up with eight X-wings, half a squadron’s worth of recruits, and a freighter full of supplies, it’s the closest to happy Poe’s been since Finn and Rose and BB-8 showed up alive, and everybody else seems to feel the same.  

It doesn’t hurt that Snap’s brought several cases of Corellian brandy - “Purchased completely legally, by the way!” he yells when Rose opens the first crate - and they crack open a bottle.  It’s the nearest thing to a celebration they’ve had since D’Qar; there are almost 100 of them now, when you count the new recruits, and they’re alive and mostly in one piece and that’s more than a lot of their friends can say, so.  Rey is talking to BB-8, trying to get him to play music - and he does, the little traitor, for _Rey_  he’ll reduce himself to a common noise amplifier - and Leia is watching all of them, her first glass of brandy still warming in her hand, and Finn - Finn is watching Poe, and Poe smiles without even meaning to, and the weirdest part is that Finn smiles back.

“Good to see you not stuck inside a bacta bag,” Snap says, slapping Finn on the back.  

“Good not to be in one,” Finn says.

“So I heard Dameron sent you on some kinda suicide mission?” and the intel is right but the tone’s too light, all wrong; Snap’s been gone for weeks, since before they evacuated D’Qar, he doesn’t have the context, the details.  He thinks the story is full of heroes.  

Of course he does; General Organa knows propaganda.  She knows that spreading it around that the best pilot in the Resistance got most of his fellow rebels killed, that he all but pulled the blaster trigger himself, isn’t the kind of messaging that fills up the volunteer rolls.  And anyway, nobody who knows the truth wants to talk about it much, but Poe knows what they’d say, if they did: they’d say that there aren’t enough of them left to kick somebody out, throw somebody in the brig, line somebody up against the wall with a blindfold and a cigarette, not even somebody who deserves it as much as Poe Dameron does.  

“It wasn’t,” Finn says, quickly, and then he takes a deep breath, throws his shoulders back, “it wasn’t a _suicide_  mission.”

“Atta boy,” Snap says, grinning and slapping Finn on the back again, and Poe grins too and drains the rest of his brandy in one gulp.  

  
  
  


“Rose kissed me,” Finn says.

Poe’s teaching him how to do a systems check on an X-wing, what to look for on the walkaround before takeoff, how to inspect the fuel line and the capacitor, because they used to have people who did that kind of thing but they don’t, anymore, so today: systems checks.  Poe peers at the injector and says, “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Finn says.  

He’s on the other side of the S-foils, checking the wings for cracks.  Poe can’t see his face, and when enough time has passed that Poe decides no further details are forthcoming, he says, “Like, today?”

“No, man, after - when we crashed,” Finn says.  

__

_Crashed_ : that was one way to put it; Poe would point it out if he had even half a leg to stand on when it came to following orders, or not pulling suicidal bantha shit moves, or really anything at all.  He’s not surprised that one of the (albeit limited in number) eligible folks around the base has thrown themselves bodily at Finn, because it’s _Finn_ , and only someone blind and deaf and, like, in a coma could be surprised that people are attracted to Finn, but beyond “not surprised” Poe’s not really sure what he thinks, so he says, “With tongue?”

“You’re the worst,” Finn says.

“Fair,” Poe says, grinning into the depths of the X-wing.  “Seriously, man.  That’s cool!  I mean, if you think it’s cool?”

“It’s cool,” Finn says.  “But I don’t - I don’t think I want to do it again, or anything.”

“Ah,” Poe says.  

“Do I have to say something to her, you think?” Finn says.  “I mean, she’s my friend, I don’t have a _problem_  with it, I just - is there something I’m supposed to say?  I feel like things are probably different with this kind of stuff, you know, _here_.”

Poe is suddenly _desperately_  curious to hear about how “this kind of stuff” works in the First Order, but he is a good buddy, a _great_  buddy, even, so he says, “I mean, you don’t have to say anything if you don’t want to.  You could just - not kiss her again.  She’ll probably get the idea.  From all the not kissing.”

“Okay,” Finn says.  “Good.  That’s good.”

“Launch tube looks good,” Poe says.  “No residue from the last torpedoes, see?”

“Yeah,” Finn says.  “Should I check the other side, or - ”

“Go for it,” Poe says.  

They work in silence for a while; Finn’s around the other side of the X-wing, and Poe’s about to call it when Finn says, “General Organa isn’t mad at us.”

Finn, it turns out, is someone who likes to have conversations when nobody involved can see each other.  Poe wonders if it’s a leftover habit or a new one.  “Uh,” he says, “no.  I guess not.”

“I know she’s not like Hux, but man, if he was here?  That’s not just reconditioning, that’s decommissioning, right then and there, boom, one shot, back of the head, you don’t even see it coming,” and Poe thinks that he’d like to strangle pretty much everybody in the First Order, and then Finn continues, “But I mean, she should be mad at us at least, right?  We - ”

“We were trying,” Poe says, staring at the side of the fighter, “to save the Resistance.”

“But we didn’t,” Finn says.

“No,” Poe says.  “But she knows why we did what we did, and for her - that’s enough.”

There’s a pause.  “Is it enough, though?” Finn says, so quietly that Poe’s not sure he’s meant to hear it, so he pretends he doesn’t.  

  
  
  


Sometimes Poe thinks about flying into a star.

Crashing isn’t hypothetical for Poe Dameron: he’s done it five times, one of those in a TIE fighter, and he knows it’s not glamorous.  He’s always hoped, if he goes out in his X-wing - and let’s be honest, he’s pretty much always assumed he will - that it’ll be in a flash of light: _bang_ , a red symbol on his commander’s holotablet, and no more.  He’d probably never even know what hit him.   

But flying into a star: that’d be something else.  He doesn’t know exactly when he’d burn up; would the transparisteel melt around him before he felt the heat?  He could leave BB-8 behind, sneak off in the night and watch as the brightness went from a speck in the distance to everything he could see and then black all over again.

But it’s not like he’d actually do it.  That’d be crazy, and Poe’s crazy but he’s not _that_  crazy, and anyway, they can’t spare an X-wing.

  
  
  


Snap gets word that there’s a cantina a dozen klicks from the new base that’s especially sympathetic to the Resistance, and before anyone can talk him out of it he’s got half the new recruits in a landspeeder, and Threnalli and Connix and Rey and Finn too, and Poe leans against the wall, ready to watch them leave, until the general says, “Go with them, will you?”

“They don’t need supervision, sir,” Poe says.

“I know they don’t,” Leia says.  “Go anyway.”

“Plenty of work to do around here.”

“You’re telling me,” she says.  “I’m giving you the night off, Dameron.”

“Last call!” Snap yells.  

“Poe,” Leia says, too gently, and he tells himself that’s the only reason he pushes off from the wall and jogs over to the speeder: to show her that he’s not something broken that she has to be careful with.  The fact that Finn grins at him when he jumps on the speeder just before it takes off, that’s got nothing to do with it.

The guy behind the bar won’t take their credits, and Poe gives half a thought to worrying that he’s about to sell them out to the First Order before he decides that it’s too late now; Snap’s already ordered a round of red dwarfs, and Connix is holding one up and yelling, “To rebel scum!” and if they’re gonna go down tonight, Poe thinks as he lifts his own glass, at least they’re gonna go down _hard_.

The first drink makes everything a little better, and the second one does too, so he keeps going, and then suddenly he’s holding number nine and he’s squeezed up against the bar and Rey’s telling a story that he thinks he’s supposed to know, supposed to chime in with some of the details, even, and -

“What do you think,” Rey says, gesturing at Finn, “could he pull off the orange jumpsuit?” 

And it’s a joke, apparently, because Rey’s laughing and Finn’s shaking his head but Poe doesn’t know what to say, because he realizes he doesn’t know Finn at _all_.  He hasn’t earned the right to know Finn, not like Rey has, because all Poe’s done is give Finn a name and then attempt, repeatedly, to get him killed.  He thinks of the jacket he got repaired for Finn when he was in a coma, the jacket that Finn _apologized_  for leaving on the First Order ship during a mission Poe sent Finn on, a mission Poe hadn’t even cared that he probably wouldn’t come back from.  He woulda said he’d cared, in that distant way Poe cares about lives, other people’s and his own, but in the end that wasn’t _real,_  not real like aiming a blaster at Kylo Ren, like his thumb pressing down on the trigger in his cockpit.

It’s real now, though, real in its smallness: just a few of them left in the whole galaxy, all the ideals and the glory stripped away until they’re just Rey, fixing her hair in the mirror above the bar, and Snap, arguing with one of the recruits, and Finn, holding Rey’s drink for her and smiling at Poe, all crooked innocence because Finn saw the worst of the world and decided to run, not because he was a coward but because he cared, because to him it _is_  real, real in a way it hadn’t been for Poe until he’d seen everybody he knew get blown up in front of his eyes, and - 

“I gotta,” Poe says, and pushes through the crowd, because he’s pretty sure he’s about to be sick all over the cantina carpet and people _hate_  that, you can never get the smell out, and then he’s leaning against the wall outside the cantina, the collar of his jacket sticking to his neck, his eyes pressed shut.

The door swings open and shut.  “Hey,” Finn says, because of course he does, “you okay?”

“Yeah,” Poe says, because he’s a liar, and a good one too, if he says so himself.  “I’m great, never better, are you having fun?”

“Sure,” Finn says, and Finn is _not_  a good liar, which he must know because he continues, “I mean, it’s no TIE fighter crash, but it’s a good time.”

“Hell of a bar to set,” Poe says, “but look, if you’re an adrenaline junkie, you have found your people, my friend.  We’re all crazy here, I don’t know if you noticed?”  He opens his eyes finally, and Finn’s standing _right there_.  “Hi.  You’re standing _right there_.”

“I am,” Finn says.  “You’re trashed, aren’t you?”

“No!  What!  No!” Poe replies, which even he can admit is not his best-ever comeback.

“I would’ve pegged you for somebody who could hold their liquor,” Finn says, shaking his head.  “I mean, aren’t you supposed to be _cool_?”

“I’m offended,” Poe says.  “I’m more than offended, I’m _hurt_.  You’ve hurt me, pal.  This is me hurt.”

“Funny,” Finn says, “‘hurt’ looks like ‘obliterated’ on you.”

“Well, I kinda have to be,” Poe says, the words falling out of his mouth even as he tries to scoop them back in, “to deal with all _that_  in there,” and he gestures back at the door to the cantina.

“Oh,” Finn says, “you mean - the recruits?”

“They’re trying to buy me _drinks_ ,” Poe says, feeling sick again, “because they think - ”

“Yeah,” Finn says, “I know.”

“I shouldn’t’a come,” Poe says, and everything’s _spinning_. 

“To the cantina?”  
  
“In the Falcon,” Poe says, and shuts his eyes.  A slow spin: he can handle that.  He can handle _right now_.  When the next _right now_  arrives, he’ll handle that one too.  

“Hey,” Finn says, “do you wanna get out of here?”

“With you?  Definitely,” Poe says, and then, trying not to literally smack himself in the face, “not that I mean _with_  you, that was not a come on, and if it was it woulda been a bad one, but it _wasn’t_  - ”

“I know, man,” Finn says, laughing.  

He pushes off the wall and Poe does too, and everything goes a little sideways, and Finn, Finn is _amazing_ , not that that’s news, Finn is grabbing him around the waist and yanking him upright before he can hit the ground.  “‘M fine,” Poe says, letting his head fall onto Finn’s shoulder, “fine, the wall - ”

“Yeah, it was the _wall’s_  fault,” Finn says, pulling him toward the speeder. It’s empty, the rest of the partiers are still in the cantina, so Finn plays with the switches until he figures out how to get it started and they glide out of town, and the air is still too warm and everything is still spinning but Finn, Poe can just _tell_ , Finn’s got it all under control.

  
  
  


Poe wakes up feeling like he got hit by a speeder.

“Fuck,” he says, and there’s an aborted snuffle at the foot of his bunk that sounds nothing like BB-8, so he opens his eyes and says, “the _fuck_?”

It’s Finn.  He’s blinking himself awake from the floor, his head tilted back against the mattress near Poe’s knees.  “Hey.”

“What’re you doing there?” Poe says, and then the headache hits, and he adds, pathetically, “Ow.”

Finn rubs the heel of his hand into his eye.  “You’re alive.”

“Unfortunately,” Poe says.  “I get the feeling I said something stupid last night, did I say something stupid last night?”

“No more than usual,” Finn says and _damn_ , he really is a bad liar.  “I mean, 90% of what you say is stupid, so - ”

“All right, all right,” Poe says.  “Hey, you got anything to - ”

“Here,” Finn says, holding up a canteen before he’s even finished asking for it.

“My hero,” Poe says, and he’s glad Finn isn’t looking at him because he think he might be blushing, now, because he has a faint memory of being sick in the ‘fresher after they got back to base and an even fainter one of Finn’s hand, strong and warm on the small of his back.  “Hey,” he says, “thanks, man.  You didn’t have to stay, I - ”

“I know,” Finn says.  He rubs the back of his neck, working out a kink that Poe can imagine, tight and hot under his fingertips.  “You just seemed - I didn’t want to get blamed if you died in your sleep or something.”

“Well, still,” Poe says.  “Thanks.”  He’s just barely stopping himself from knocking Finn’s hand away and going at the knot himself, feeling Finn’s muscles and the blood flowing under his skin, warm and clean and _alive_.  He wonders what Finn would do, if he tried.  He’s afraid to find out either way.

Finn saves him the trouble: he stretches and yawns, pushes himself to his feet and says, “So, are all Resistance pilots such lightweights, or is it just you?”

In lieu of response, Poe throws the canteen at his head.

  
  
  


He drags himself through his day’s tasks, eating a filling and delicious breakfast of half a cup of water which he promptly throws up; by evening he still feels like something a Wookiee coughed up, and he’s finally about to head back to his bunk when Snap sticks his head into the hangar and says, “The general wants to see you.”

She’s waiting for him in what passes for a command center these days.  “How’s your hangover?” she says without looking up.

“No idea what you’re talking about,” Poe says.  

“That’s what they all say.  So, what are the chances somebody at that cantina ratted us out?”

Poe shrugs.  “They weren’t flying the Resistance flag over the bar or anything, but I think we’re good.”

“Glad to hear it,” Leia says, and looks up at him.  “Finn’s worried about you.”

Poe blinks.  “Finn’s worried,” he says, because that part he gets, he’s seen Finn worried, Finn worried is something he can picture, it’s the second part that trips him up, “about _me_?”

“Yes.”

“He said that to you?”

“He said,” Leia says, “that he thinks you could use some time off.  I extrapolated.”

“Time off,” Poe says.  “Sure.”

“Maybe he’s onto something,” she says.  “You’ve been running yourself ragged.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” Poe says, “are you saying you want me not to work so hard?”

“What I’m saying is that I think you’re still running away from what you did back on the carrier,” the general says.  “And somebody who can’t stop running isn’t any good to me.”

Poe stands up straighter.  “I’m not looking for your absolution.”

“Well, that’s good,” Leia says, “considering I’m not offering it.  We need leaders right now, Poe, and I happen to think you’re up for the task.  Please don’t let me down.”

She doesn’t say “again”, but they both hear it, loud and clear.  “Sir,” Poe murmurs, nodding, and then he’s gone, not fleeing, _definitely_  not running away, just - just going somewhere else.

  
  
  


He doesn’t realize that “somewhere else” is Finn’s bunk until he’s right outside, his hand already pressing the button to open it.  When the door opens, there’s the kind of silence that fills a space that was, just a moment previously, full of talking.  Finn’s sitting backwards in the hard-backed chair, and Rey is there - of course Rey is there - curled up at the food of Finn’s bunk, her arms wrapped around her knees and the smile falling off her lips at the sight of Poe in the doorway.  

Finn turns around, his eyes widening slightly in surprise.  “Hey,” he says, “what’s - ”

“Can I talk to you?” Poe says.

Finn blinks.  “Of course,” he says, “what - ”

“I’ll go,” Rey says, because she probably doesn’t need the Force to see where this is headed.

“Don’t worry about it,” Poe says, “this’ll only take a second.”

“No, it’s fine - ”

“ _Stay_ ,” Poe says firmly, and Rey snaps her mouth shut, too obedient, and there’s another regret Poe can add to the list; _get in line_ , he thinks, and says, “What’d you say to the general about me?”

Finn blinks at him.  “What?”

“You said something to Leia,” Poe says.  “I want you to tell me what you said - ”

“She asked me,” Finn says, “she asked how you were doing, and I said, I dunno, same as always, I guess, that maybe you could use a break - ”

“A _break_ ,” Poe repeats.  “Are you fucking - ”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with that?” Finn says.  “People get breaks here, right?”

“That’s not the _point_ ,” Poe snaps.  “You’re my friend, you’re not supposed to go behind my back and - ”

“That’s right, I _am_  your friend, and I was honest with her, because friends look out for each other, and sometimes you say things, and it’s like - ”

He cuts himself off and looks away.

“What?” Poe says, and across the room Rey flinches at the volume.  “It’s like _what_?”

“It’s like, I don’t know, like you’re thinking of getting out of here or something,” Finn says.

“Getting _out_  of here?” Poe says, incredulous.  “I’m sorry, are you saying you think I’d _leave_?  Leave the _Resistance_?  Are you fucking _kidding_  me - ”

“That’s not the only way out,” Finn says.  “I knew people in the First Order, guys who went into battles they knew they’d never come out of, and they were _happy_  about it, man, and I don’t want to see you - ”

“Hang on,” Poe says, backing up, feeling for the button that’ll let him back into the corridor.  “I’m the one who told _you_  not to fly into that battering ram.”

“Yeah,” Finn says, “and I’m glad you did.  Now I’m trying to do the same for you.”

“Right,” Poe says.  “Look, pal, if I need your help, I’ll _ask_  for it, all right?”

Finn’s eyes are cold when he meets Poe’s.  “Sure, man,” he says, “whatever you - ”

But Poe’s already out the door.

  
  
  


The next day, Rey leaves in the Falcon, takes off to some mining planet where they’ve got what she needs to remake her lightsaber.

Finn goes with her.  Poe thinks that’s probably for the best.

  
  
  


The new base is getting crowded.

It’s a good thing, mostly, but if there’s one thing people don’t always think about, it’s _logistics_.  Fighting a war against the First Order isn’t just a matter of how many X-wings and blasters and boots on the ground you have - you need the actual boots too, and food to feed the people in the boots, and lockers to store the boots in when nobody’s wearing them.  The weeks they spent living out of the Falcon with 20 people and three bunks were hard, but being here on a base with a growing group of fighters is harder; more training sessions to run, more mouths to feed, more boots to procure, all in different sizes.  

Poe knows starfighters, and droids, and how to cheer people up when somebody they know just got killed, but over the years the thing he’s learned the most about is boots, and that’s why he knows, when Snap shows up with another squadron of X-wings, that they’re in trouble.

“I know,” the general says when he points it out to her.  Everybody else is celebrating: more pilots, more starfighters, there are _enough_  of them now, they can start _fighting_  again.  “Any ideas?  I’m open to suggestions.”  

 _From me?_  Poe wants to say, but doesn’t.  “Takodana,” he says instead.

The general glances at him, then back at the new arrivals.  “Too much rebuilding.”

“Maz knows people,” Poe says, which is an understatement: Maz knows _everybody_ , and if she wants to rebuild her compound on Takodana, they’ll show up.  “And we can protect it, now.”

“It’s supposed to be neutral.”

“Yeah, and they blew it up,” Poe says.  

Across the small hangar, somebody opens the last bottle of Corellian brandy.  Leia sighs, just a breath of air, so light that if you weren’t watching for it, you’d miss it.

“Get a recon team together,” she says.

  
  
  


Maz’s intel was right, as it turns out: Takodana is still occupied, but it’s a skeleton crew, a single squadron of stormtroopers scattered across the whole planet.  They’re not doing anything, just standing around, running patrols, keeping up appearances so the Resistance doesn’t do exactly what they’re thinking about doing and try to take it over.

Poe and his team land unnoticed in the lush forest a few klicks from the water.  They wend their way through the trees, BB-8 leading the way, as dusk fades into darkness, and get to the crumbled castle as the planet’s third moon rises.

They’re not the first people to try coming back to see what’s left, it’s clear from the ruins; they’ve been picked clean of anything valuable.  “Fan out,” Poe says.  “We’re looking for booby traps, anything that looks like surveillance equipment.  Meet back here in thirty minutes.  And remember, if anybody shows up, you get out.  We’re not here for a fight.”

Snap rolls his eyes at the last part, and Threnalli looks dubious.  Poe understands where they’re coming from: he can imagine exactly how good it would feel to stumble across a stormtrooper on patrol and shoot him in the face.  But Leia’s instructions had been clear, and Poe knows she’s right: they’re recon, not an advance strike team, and the Resistance can’t afford to lose anybody in a stupid skirmish over a planet they’re not even sure they want.  The others don’t like it, but they’ll listen to him.  Poe’s the only one around here who ignores orders just because he doesn’t like them.

BB-8 trills at him as they pick their way through the rubble.  “I know, buddy,” Poe says.  “I hate it too.”  

His assigned section is clear, that’s obvious pretty fast, just cracked stone and mud from the recent rain, but he and BB-8 check it thoroughly before they head back to the rendezvous.  They haven’t spotted a single craft in the wide-open night sky, and Poe’s already wrapping his mind around his recommendation to the general - that they take it back, take out the patrols and slip in to rebuild quietly and quickly - and that’s why he’s surprised, for a second, to see the two stormtroopers creeping out of the forest.

The surprise doesn’t last: he hits the ground behind what used to be a wall, his blaster poking painfully into his ribs.  The troopers are walking toward the front of the castle, exactly where Poe’s team is supposed to meet in a few minutes.  They’re mostly hidden from view by the trees, and Poe realizes that Snap and Threnalli, coming back from where they’re scouting the beach, don’t stand a chance.  The troopers have a clear line of sight: they’ll shoot the Resistance pilots in the back before Snap and Threnalli even notice them.

“Shit,” Poe hisses.  “ _Shit_.”  He weighs his options: he can shoot the Stormtroopers now and probably bring a couple more patrols running, risk an all-out firefight, or he can wait and see if Snap and Threnalli miss the rendezvous and hope that the Stormtroopers pass them by.  

Or.

“BB-8,” Poe whispers.  “On the count of three, you head to the right and go straight for the rendezvous, okay?  Get the team out of here, and as soon as you’re in comms range, send a message back to General Organa.  We can take this place back.”

BB-8 beeps unhappily.

“Somebody can come back for me,” Poe assures him.  “They gotta think it’s just me, okay?”  He reaches out, and BB-8 bumps into his hand gently.  “You know what to do, buddy.  Ready?  Okay.  One.  Two.   _Three_.”

Poe takes a deep breath, stands up, and yells, “Hey, bucketheads!  You gonna walk right past me?”

The stormtroopers whirl around, shooting before they can see him; their blasts bounce harmlessly off the crumbled rock of the castle thirty meters to Poe’s left, and BB-8 shoots off to the right toward the beach and the rendezvous.  

Poe shoots into the air, three times, and hopes his team is close enough to see the signal for what it is even as the stormtroopers lift their blasters and shoot at him again; their aim is truer now that he’s revealed his position, and he drops to the dirt.  

“Nice try, guys,” he shouts over his shoulder.  “This where they send new recruits for training or something?”

A blaster bolt hits the rock right above his head, and the rock explodes, loud and a little too close for comfort.  He wishes he could peer around the edge to see if BB-8’s made it to the front of the castle, but the troopers are getting closer, and he needs to lead them away from the sand and the forest and into the depths of the destroyed castle.  If he can find a way into the dungeons, he can probably lose them, and maybe if he lasts a couple of days, the general can send somebody back for him.  If anybody wants to come, that is; the Resistance doesn’t leave people behind if they can help it, but he hopes she doesn’t try to force anybody to come who doesn’t want to, order anybody to risk their life to rescue Poe Dameron, who’s probably dead in the ruins already, or should be, at least, if there’s any justice in the - 

The crumbled wall explodes again, and Poe goes deaf for a horrible moment - he can’t fly if he can’t hear, and if he can’t fly then he’s no good to _anybody_  - but then sound comes rushing back in.  “Hey,” he calls out, his voice sounding weirdly far away, “I get it, you gotta smoke me out, it’s two against one and you guys aren’t trained for that, you need six or seven of you, minimum, but look, can we take it easy with the grenades?  These rocks are a thousand years old, they’re _antiques_ , the last thing this place needs is to get blown up even _more_  - ”

And then he gets up and runs.

They follow, shooting at him every few seconds, their blasts pulverizing rock and sparking off metal beams.  He leads them deeper into the ruins; he shape of the castle is just an echo of what it used to be, but Poe knows it well enough to double back, twist a winding path through its dusty skeleton.

He throws himself around a corner and pulls out his blaster.  The rest of the recon team should be headed back through the forest; running full-tilt, they’ll be off-planet in five minutes.  

He hasn’t heard the patrol following him call for backup; that’s good news, that’s _really_  good news, because that means they think it’s just him, and they think they can take care of him.  Man, these guys are _cocky_.  Finn would say _stupid_ , probably, and Poe thinks: _Aren’t most of them stupid, though?  Too stupid for me to turn_   _to our side, like I did with you._

 _You didn’t turn me_ , he hears Finn saying, back at the base a few weeks ago, rolling his eyes as he takes apart a blaster.  

 _You sure_? he’d shot back.   _I assumed it was my smile_.  

__

_Man, all I saw you do before I decided to get you out of there was bleed,_  Finn’d said, and Poe had laughed at the audacity and the truth of it and Finn had too, a clean, clear sound, and for one bright moment it had all been just a little bit better.  

He dives out from around the corner, ready to run, and the next stun grenade knocks him flat on his back.

Poe sees stars: he can’t tell, from here, if they’re real or not, because something’s a little loose in his head.  There’s a ringing sound coming from far away, underwater, maybe, and Poe shakes his head to get the water out of his ears just as the stormtroopers run around the corner at the other end of the crumbled corridor, blasters up.  

“Don’t shoot,” he says, and then he does: one bolt for the one on the right, right in the chest, and then another at the one on the left, but he only gets him in the shoulder - the stars in his eyes are in the way, and his hands aren’t exactly where he thinks they are, and the second stormtrooper gets a blast off before Poe hits him square in the face.  

The pain sears through Poe’s thigh, and he’s pretty sure he screams, but the water has rushed back into his ears, and it’s closing in around his eyes, too, and - 

  
  
  


“ _-_ come the fuck _on_ ,” someone says, and their hand is around his _throat_.

“What,” he gasps, trying to bat them away, and then there’s laughter, harsh and a little broken up, but it’s definitely laughter, clean and clear and _bright_  and - “Finn?”

“Yeah, man,” Finn says, because of course he does, and Poe forces his eyes open.  Finn’s face is _right there_ , and his hand slides up from Poe’s throat, his pulse point, to his jaw and his cheek.  “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What,” Poe says, or rather slurs, “are you _doing_  here?”

“Getting you out of here,” Finn says.  “You ready to ask for my help yet?”

“The others,” Poe says, “did they - ”

“They’re all fine,” Finn says, “they got out of here, BB-8 told the general got yourself left behind, like an _idiot_  - ”

“Like a brilliant tactician, you mean,” Poe says.  “I’m sure that’s what BB-8 said, your binary’s not good enough to understand, that’s all, hang on,” he says, because everything’s moving fast and slow in his brain all at once, “what are _you_  doing here?  You’re supposed to be with Rey, you - ”

“Wait a second, did you get _shot_?” Finn interrupted.

“Oh,” Poe says, “a little bit, yeah.”

“Damn it, man, you gotta _tell_  me things like that,” Finn says, and his hand leaves Poe’s face and moves down his body, skates the edges of what Poe knows must be a pretty gnarly rip in his favorite pants.  “We have to get you out of here - shit, can you walk?”

“As long as we define it loosely,” Poe rasps, and Finn hauls him into a sitting position and puts his arm around Poe’s shoulders.  

“All right,” Finn says, “look, we’re gonna have to move.  The Falcon’s in a clearing just past the beach.  I can carry you, but if you’re upright we’ll be faster - ”

“I get it,” Poe says, gritting his teeth.  

“Okay,” Finn says, and his arm around Poe’s shoulders tightens, and later Poe can blame it on the stars in his eyes and the water in his ears, so he leans forward and puts his forehead against Finn’s and just exhales.  Finn’s hand, the one that isn’t holding him up, slides into his hair, tangles in it, pulls Poe in until their bodies are half-slotted together.  

“Sorry,” Finn says, his breath ghosting across Poe’s lips, “I’m sorry, I just - ”

“Don’t apologize,” Poe says, because he doesn’t know what Finn’s apologizing _for_  but he knows he shouldn’t be, Finn should _never_  be apologizing, “please don’t - ”

“Fuck,” Finn breathes, “Poe Dameron, you have got to _stop_  making me think you’re dead, you hear me?”

“I’ll give it my best shot,” Poe says, 

“Come on,” Finn says, and he pulls away, tucks his arm under Poe’s shoulders and heaves them both to their feet.  

Poe has to focus pretty hard on not screaming when he puts weight on his left leg, so he says, “Come on, slowpoke, aren’t we in a hurry?”

“Unbelievable,” Finn grits out, pinning Poe to his side and moving through the rubble as quickly as he can, Poe trying - and mostly failing - to contribute to holding his own weight up.

“Hey,” he says, “apologies in advance if I puke on your boots.”

“Nothing I haven’t seen from you before,” Finn says, his hand tight on the wrist of the arm Poe has slung across his shoulders.

They pick their way through the castle, Finn keeping his eyes on the sky.  “We’re gonna retake this place,” Poe says, just to keep himself awake.  “Their defenses are limited and if the others made it back without being seen, they’ll have no idea we’re coming.”

“Can we focus on getting out of here this time before we start thinking about coming back?” Finn says.  

They’re out in the open, now; any patrol ship on the lookout for anything suspicious would definitely see their lumbering three-legged form cutting straight across what used to be the entrance to Maz’s castle.  “Faster,” Finn hisses, the gaping space around them clearly getting to him, “gotta move _faster_  - ”

“I hope you’re talking to yourself again,” Poe says, and Finn laughs even though Poe’s just dead weight, he’s slowing them down, and any moment they’re gonna look up and see a TIE fighter headed their way, he just _knows_  it - 

And then the Millennium Falcon looms out of the darkness through the trees.

“Do you have him?” Rey shouts at them as Finn drags Poe up the ramp and heaves him onto the bunk in the main hold.  

“We got him, now get us out of here,” Finn yells back, but Rey’s way ahead of him; the Falcon roars and then lifts off, and Poe closes his eyes, just for a second, and Finn’s saying something, his voice warm and close, and it sounds like “Do _not_  pass out on me, Dameron,” but Poe’s not gonna worry about it too much.

  
  
  


He wakes up in what passes for a med bay in the new base, completely alone.

It’s really just a big storage room they shoved a couple of beds into, and it’s weirdly quiet as Poe crashes back into consciousness.  His leg’s in a bacta-bag and his head feels like it’s stuffed with cotton, but overall, he’s had worse.  

He sits up on his elbows.  It’s not that he was expecting someone to be here when he woke up or anything - there’s about a million better things to do around here than wait at the bedside of some damsel in distress who got himself shot up because he couldn’t handle two measly stormtroopers - but the silence is too loud, broken only by the steady beeping of the machine that counts out his own heartbeats.

Eventually, the door swishes open.  “You’re awake,” General Organa says.  She pulls up a hard-backed chair and drops into it, her skirts settling around her on a moment’s delay.

“Seems that way,” Poe says.  “Did everybody - ”

“They all made it back to their ships without being seen,” she says.  

“Good,” Poe says.  “We can take Takodana back, General.”

“Yes, it seems like maybe we can.  You did good today.”

“I did what I was supposed to do,” Poe says, and he doesn’t say “for once”, but they both hear it.

“And that’s hard sometimes,” Leia says, gently.  “But you did it.”

“Don’t worry,” he says lightly, settling back down onto his pillow.  “I’ll fuck up again sometime soon.”

“I should hope so,” Leia says, and Poe looks at her.  “Come on, Poe.  If I’d wanted people who always followed orders, I wouldn’t have recruited defectors from the New Republic fleet.”

Poe snorts.  “Well, you got what you asked for, huh?”

“Do you want me to say it, then?” Leia says.  “All right.  I’ll say it.  What you did during the evacuation was wrong.  It was stupid, and reckless, and probably the biggest mistake of your entire life.”  She settles back into her chair.  “And you have to stop running away from that.  I need you too much for you to lose yourself to it.”

“I’m not,” Poe says, and stops the lie, tries again, “I don’t _deserve_  to stop running.”

“Probably not,” Leia agrees.  “But you didn’t deserve to be tortured at the hands of the First Order, either.  It’s not really about what we _deserve_.  All we can do about it is try to do better than we did before, and hope that it all evens out, in the end.”

“It won’t ever even out for me,” Poe says, so hoarsely that he hopes the general can’t hear him, but she shakes her head. 

“Do you think I’ve never done anything stupid and reckless?  Sometimes it feels like that’s _all_  I do,” she says.  “Sometimes it works out, and sometimes it doesn’t.  People keep following me anyway, and I don’t know exactly why, but I think it’s because more often than not, I’m doing it for the right reasons.”  She reaches out and puts her hand over his, and it’s small and cool and strong.  “I’ve learned a lot of hard lessons.  I wish I didn’t have to watch you learn them, too.  But people around here respect you.  They want to follow you.  You need to be that person for them.”

“I don’t,” he says, and pauses.  “Does it get _better_?”

“Not really,” Leia says.  “But it gets easier to bear.  Not overnight, but then again, if it got easier overnight, you wouldn’t be the person I think you are.”  She squeezes his hand.  “You did the right thing today, on a day when we really needed it.  Don’t underestimate that.”

She pats his hand one more time and stands up; the conversation, Poe thinks wryly, is over when Leia Organa says it is.  “I’ll expect you back on duty in 48 hours.”

“Sounds good, sir,” Poe says, and returns her half-smile.  

She turns to leave, and then pauses and looks back.  “By the way,” she says, casually, “Finn was here earlier, waiting for you to wake up.  He looked so anxious that I made him go do weapons inventory just to get his mind off it.  But - when I walked in, I’m pretty sure he was holding your hand.”

“Thanks for the intel,” Poe says, and Leia winks at him.  

  
  
  


Poe leaves medical just after dawn; the bacta-bag on his leg has been traded for a bandage, and he’s limping, but only a little, as he makes his way toward his bunk.  He wants a shower and his bed, and he’s considering skipping the shower when he hears somebody skid around the corner behind him and call, “Poe!”

“Hey,” Poe says, turning around as Finn catches up to him.  “How’s it going, buddy?”

“I’m fine, I’m good, how are you?  I went to see you in medical and they said I’d just missed you,” Finn said.  “So you’re good?”

“I’m good,” Poe says, smiling a little as Finn looks him up and down, apparently trying to see for himself.  “Hey - thanks for getting me out of there.”

“Don’t mention it,” Finn says.  “So are we taking Takodana back?”

“The general wouldn’t confirm or deny, but I have a pretty good feeling about it.”

“Awesome,” Finn says.  

“You - ” Poe says, just as Finn starts, “I’m - ”

They both stop.  Poe laughs and says, “Go ahead.”

“Cool,” Finn says.  “Look, I’m sorry about before.  You’re right, I shouldn’t have said anything to - ”

“No,” Poe says, “don’t apologize, Finn.  Really.  I was being an idiot.  In a couple of ways.  In a lot of ways, actually.”

“I mean,” Finn says, “I’m not gonna argue that.”

Poe grins, and it feels a little bit rusty.  “Yeah, I didn’t think you would.  But seriously, don’t - you’re a good friend.  A _really_  good friend.  I’m gonna try to be that too.”

“You do okay,” Finn says, and grins back.  “When you’re not puking on me or bleeding on me or something.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Poe says, shoving him a little bit, and Finn pushes back, and Poe pushes back a little harder and Finn laughs and grabs his hand, and then he’s wrapping his other hand around the back of Finn’s neck and pulling him closer instead of pushing away, and Finn’s taking a deep breath and leaning his forehead against Poe’s, and Poe thinks that everything isn’t better, not yet, but it also isn’t any worse, and for now, that’s something.


End file.
